The Breaking of Alec Hardy
by ShirleyAnn66
Summary: How many times can you bend before you break? Pre-Broadchurch


Disclaimer: I don't own Broadchurch or Alec Hardy although I'd be interested in a timeshare arrangement if possible. No infringement is intended and I'll return the characters in almost the same shape as when I received them.

* * *

He sits on the beach and stares at the horizon, where the ocean appears deceptively calm.

He ignores the waves breaking ashore, the chaos they create just below his eye-line as the water rushes towards his feet. The churning of water and sand reminds him too much of his parents, their constant battles as unending as the waves, rolling just outside his line of sight but always there, underlying everything.

Every now and then, a larger wave rolls in, breaking higher. It laps round him, drenching him in the process. He doesn't move. He doesn't flinch.

He doesn't know why he's here, sitting on a beach beneath terrifyingly high orange cliffs, beside the equally terrifying ocean, staring fixedly at a far point on the horizon. He only knows that when he's here, when he does this, he finds...

Refuge.

Yes. That's it.

The calm horizon calls to him, shows him a place beyond the chaos created by his parents, promises that if he can just get past the turbulence of the breaking waves, there can be peace.

Every now and then there's a wave that's larger than the rest. Stronger. Higher. It rushes the beach and crashes over him, leaving him coughing and spitting out sand, wiping salt water from his stinging eyes.

That, too, is like his parents, on the bad nights, when his father's rage rushes over them both, when he tugs at his mother, begging her to come with him. He has some dim idea they can huddle together in his bedroom with the door locked while his father roars outside and he can keep her safe.

She never goes with him, never backs down from a fight, and to be fair, his dad never lays a hand on either of them. That doesn't stop him from watching carefully, and subtly putting himself between the two of them when they seem particularly out of control.

Now, on this holiday to this town whose name he's already forgotten, he wanders to the beach to get away from their constant arguing. He sits and watches the distant horizon and longs for the calm he sees that's so far away and feels forever out of reach.

*/*/*/*/*

Long after the holiday is over, he finds himself remembering that beach during the worst of things. He looks towards the peaceful waters as waves crash over him.

He doesn't move.

He doesn't flinch.

*/*/*/*/*

He's a wee child, thin and quiet, with few friends and even fewer he allows home. When he finally sprouts up, he ends up tall and skinny, no muscles to speak of, really, no matter how hard he tries, too sharp-featured to be handsome, too gangly to be graceful, too quiet to be charming. He's teased unmercifully by both the boys and the girls-who feel like another species to him, difficult to understand and even more difficult to approach. He tries once or twice when he's old enough, with those few girls who seem to show a little interest in him. He shyly stumbles over his words, blushing furiously, only to have the girl laugh in his face or respond in horrified embarrassment or try to let him down gently.

All are equally humiliating and he stops trying. The teasing, though, continues all through his school years and ranges from name-calling to full-on public humiliation.

He learns to deal with all of it the same way he deals with his parents arguing: by letting it wash over him as he stares out to where the sea is calm.

*/*/*/*/*

When he's seventeen, his mother dies. An accident. A car, a moment of inattention, and a life is snuffed out.

It's his first experience with death, the suddenness of it, the cruelty, the heartless finality.

In all of his memories, his mother lives on, young and beautiful and desperately unhappy.

She told him God will put him in the right place at the right time, even if he doesn't know it, but he doesn't know if he believes her. He tried to save her and failed and as he stands beside his father, burying the only thing they have in common, he wonders what his purpose may be, if it wasn't to save his mother.

He stays to watch them lower her into the ground, to cover her over, refusing to budge no matter how much his father curses him, and he has a long walk home when it's over, but it doesn't matter.

He doesn't move.

He doesn't flinch.

It's something he needs to do, except he doesn't see the coffin, not really. Instead he imagines the calm ocean in the distance, and thinks this is just another wave crashing over him. It's just bigger than the others and leaves him choking and coughing and wiping salt water from his stinging eyes.

*/*/*/*/*

He mourns, deeply, alone, while his father...well, his father rages and all he can do is watch. He almost wishes there was a way to close the gap between them, a way to give comfort and receive it in return. Instead, without his mother there to connect them, he can no longer hide his utter contempt for the man he calls Da and the rows begin, getting worse and worse as the days go by.

He can't even remember what starts the last row-only that it _is_ the last.

He walks out with nothing but a single tote bag and never goes back.

*/*/*/*/*

He becomes a police officer almost by accident. Fueled by a desire to protect those who can't protect themselves, it's the only profession that catches his fancy.

He breezes through training, is put in a uniform, given a partner and sent out onto the streets of Glasgow.

His first murder scene sends him scurrying round a corner where he vomits so violently and for so long he half-expects his stomach and not just its contents to spew out. When he finally composes himself, he wipes his eyes with shaking hands and tells himself that the poor woman inside that room deserves justice even if it's too late to protect her.

He returns to the room and his partner, Les, gives him a sharp, shrewd look then nods and tells him what to do next.

Les takes him out that night and gets him rip roaring drunk. It's not the way to react to every murder, he tells him as they settle at a table in the pub, but it's sometimes the only way to deal with the first one.

*/*/*/*/*

He sees her in his dreams for years afterwards.

*/*/*/*/*

He stays in uniform for three years and they're some of the worst and best years of his life. Les is much older, gruff and rough around the edges. Les teases him unmercifully but won't allow anyone else to say a word against him and there's never any malice in anything he says or does to him. It takes him a long while, but he learns to trust his partner just as his partner learns to trust him and he is the first person he's called friend since before his mother died.

Les drags him to parties and pubs and even sets him up with the woman who becomes his first serious relationship. When she ends it, she tells him it's because she just can't see herself married to a police officer.

He ends up at Les' where they slouch on his sofa and Les tells him he's leaving the force, he's had enough.

The world he'd begun to think was solid shifts beneath his feet for the second time that night. It reminds him of the sand being sucked out from beneath him on that unknown beach where he'd first learned to look beyond the chaos to find a promise of peace.

Les tells him to take his Detective exam, get off the street, put his talents to better use. He scrunches up his face but finds himself promising to try. He sees Les off three weeks later, passes the detective exam three weeks after that and starts down a new path.

It's a long time before he fully trusts anyone again.

*/*/*/*/*

He gets a job as a Detective Sergeant in Sandbrook, almost as far from Scotland as he can get without actually leaving the island. He's twenty-three and feels like forty but a new city gives him new hope and new purpose. It's challenging and exciting and when he's partnered with Tess Henchard, a young, up-and-coming Detective Sergeant, he falls in love immediately and unexpectedly, like stepping into a clear pond only to discover it's ten feet deep.

It's glorious and unrequited for what feels like forever but he almost doesn't mind, even when she laughs-kindly-at his obvious infatuation. Things change after a particularly tough case and they almost seamlessly move from colleagues to lovers to husband-and-wife. They have Daisy and he gets promoted to Detective Inspector.

He thinks he's finally made it to that calm horizon that's always been so far out of reach.

*/*/*/*/*

Daisy's not quite two the first time he realizes Tess is shagging someone else.

He rages through the living room, throwing things against the walls, shattering vases and knick knacks. Tess, of course, isn't home because she's holed up somewhere with her lover. He finally understands all those crime scenes he's worked where one spouse kills the other in a jealous rage.

The noise wakes Daisy and her terrified cries are the only thing that stops his rampage. He cradles her against his shoulder, making soothing noises as he carries her into the living room where the carnage hits him in the gut and stops him in his tracks.

He holds Daisy even more tightly because suddenly _he's_ the child again, positioning himself in front of his mother as his father roars through the house, or watching from the sidelines as they rage at each other.

He realizes that for the last few minutes he had become his father. The thought terrifies and repulses him.

His anger is part of him. It's a vital tool in the work he does. It sustains him, drives him forward, keeps him going when he wants to drop, but it cannot control him.

He _will not_ allow it to control him.

He soothes Daisy back to sleep and as he cleans the living room, he reminds himself once again of what he learned on that long ago beach. Let the turbulence play out around and over him but keep his eyes on where the ocean is calm.

And don't move.

Don't flinch.

*/*/*/*/*

His decision is challenged over the next ten years as Tess has several more affairs, all fleeting, and they almost don't have any effect on their marriage.

Almost.

It eats away at him. Of course. He's a proud man and there are times when it takes all he has not to act like his father. But he doesn't confront her. He doesn't want to hear about his shortcomings or why she turns to other men, but more than that he doesn't want to end it, to be alone again.

Or still. It's hard to tell sometimes.

He doesn't want to lose Daisy, especially when she's still so young.

Instead, he gradually pulls away from Tess, keeps her at a distance, tries to minimize the pain and damage she inflicts on him with casual lies. He builds a wall around the soft core of him and stays.

He stays because of Daisy.

Because he loves Tess.

Because he doesn't know who he would be without them.

*/*/*/*/*

He's starting to feel a little strange, with dizzy spells and times he can't seem to catch his breath, and he's noticing he doesn't always have his usual energy.

He puts it down to stress and keeps moving.

*/*/*/*/*

He thinks Dave is just like all the others.

At first.

Then it gradually changes, and he knows, long before things fall apart, that this time it's different.

This isn't going to end the same way as all the others.

*/*/*/*/*

When they get the call out to the Gillespie house, he knows almost immediately this one's going to be different, too.

Pippa's disappearance hits him in a way he hasn't allowed himself to feel in years. She's the same age as Daisy, and he empathizes on a raw, visceral level with the parents. There's a tightening in his chest when he thinks of how he'd feel if he was in the same situation. Pippa even looks a little like Daisy: long brown hair, sunny smile, trusting eyes.

He tries not to think about how there'll soon come a time when he won't know where Daisy is every minute of every day either. Tess is going to leave him-he doesn't think she even realizes it herself yet but he knows-and his heart skips a beat whenever he thinks about it.

He wants to find this girl and find her alive. He wants to find Lisa, too, but Pippa's the one who affects him the most. Because she's only twelve and vulnerable and he's seen too much. Because of her resemblance to Daisy. Because of the symbolism of the missing girl and the girl who will soon be missing from his own life.

The need to find Pippa becomes his driving force.

He works the case with feverish intensity but beneath the obsessive focus is an awareness that Tess and Dave are becoming more and more careless, more and more obvious. He knows it won't be long now before the inevitable confession and the tears and the closing door, shutting him away from the life he thought they'd build.

His bag is already half-packed.

Tess hasn't noticed.

*/*/*/*/*

He squints through the rain and sees something bobbing in the water, sees the trainers, and thinks _no no no_ even as he explodes into motion, slipping and sliding down the bank into the swollen river. He struggles against the current, praying desperately that he's not too late even though it's been days since the girls disappeared but maybe she's been lost in the trees and she's only just fallen in and maybe-maybe-maybe-

The river bed suddenly drops away beneath him and the current knocks him off his feet, pulling him under. He flails desperately for solid ground that's no longer within reach as he tumbles downstream, struggling to get his head above the water, coughing and choking when he breaks the surface, gulping for air before he's pulled under again and again until he finally regains his footing almost by accident.

He chokes and coughs and vomits water then, with sobbing breaths, starts again towards the bobbing trainers because now he's frantic to get to them. If he couldn't stand against the river, what chance does a twelve-year-old have?

*/*/*/*/*

He knows what he'll find when he gets there.

He knew before he slid into the river.

He carries her-what she's become-to shore and his heart feels like it's being ripped from his chest as the rain washes away his tears.

*/*/*/*/*

The confrontation with Tess and Dave comes but it's not what he expected.

It's worse.

*/*/*/*/*

He takes the blame for them.

He does it to protect Daisy and because he deserves it.

If he had only confronted Tess a long time ago then she and Dave would never have left the car in that parking garage. Would never have carelessly left vital evidence in the back seat. Wouldn't have stopped off for a quick shag because they wouldn't have needed to hide.

They would have _done their bloody jobs_ if he'd only been brave enough to force the issue with her at any point over the last ten years.

Yes.

His fault.

His responsibility.

*/*/*/*/*

He passes out in the hotel room he rented after leaving the house. It's at the height of the media frenzy and vitriol hurled in his direction.

No one finds him and he wakes alone, aching and confused and terrified.

He makes his way to his doctor's office and enters a new world, a world of tests and somber words, of options and odds and medications, of constant doctor's visits and bone-chilling uncertainty.

Suddenly he may not have time to find new evidence in the Sandbrook case.

Suddenly the truth of his mortality looms large in front of him.

He can no longer see any calm horizon. He's too overwhelmed by the waves breaking over him and the salt water stinging his eyes.

*/*/*/*/*

He flinches.

*/*/*/*/*

When Claire Ripley calls for help, he clutches at the chance to get at least one thing right before he dies.

*/*/*/*/*

He recognizes the cliffs as soon as he sees them. Finds the spot where he used to sit and stare out at sea.

He slowly lowers himself and settles into the sand, arms wrapped round his legs as he stares out to sea.

It's not the same, of course. There's no refuge to be found, not anymore. He can't pretend the chaos that's gripped his life doesn't exist. All he can do is endure and hope he solves Sandbrook before his time runs out.

Yet somehow, this place, this moment, this act, gives him hope.

Because beyond the turbulent shore, he sees peace.

*/*/*/*/*


End file.
